As scammed on eBay…

byMark AdamsonOctober 26, 2013

As seen, er, scammed on eBay…

Somehow, some bloke has found a way to hijack people’s eBay accounts to sell this Caligraph typewriter. I’ve seen it appear nearly a dozen times. The key to this scam is to persuade people to e-mail the “seller” and complete the transaction outside eBay. I hope it goes without saying that you shouldn’t, as you forfeit entirely eBay’s comprehensive buyer protection plan.

If you do bid on the item, you will likely receive this message from eBay:

Our records show that you recently contacted or received messages from through eBay’s messaging system. An unauthorized third party may have compromised this member’s account security by accessing the account.

We’ve taken action to restore this account to its original owner. Take extra caution with any communication you may have received from the compromised account. We are unaware of any problems with your own account. We sent this message only as a precaution. If you have received any messages from that seem suspicious, please feel free to forward them to us at spoof@ebay.com for review.

Fortunately, the scammer uses the same photo each time. Also, he (or she) posts his (or her) e-mail as a jpeg file to circumvent eBay’s security.

A legitimate Caligraph No. 1 auction did pull nearly $3,500 lately, so a $2,000 offer from the rouge seller might be tempting, but you might as well buy a pack of gum.

Yeah, this guy has been doing the rounds for a while now. Easily a year, probably more than two. I wonder how he is hijacking other people’s ebay accounts. Previously he just created fake accounts, that were easy to spot by the lack of feedback items. Sometimes he’d buy a heap of cheap things from his other fake accounts to get up feedback. But that also was easy to spot.